I don’t know when the moment started, and I don’t know how it got compressed down from so many hours to the blink of an eye, but it hit me as a moment when I was on my way into town to shoot the show (Home Power Hour). The moment has stretchy ends now so it is less cohesive, but I’ll try to share the particulars.

Let’s start with the Parking Lot Gypsies. I was heading over to WalMart for some Epsom Salts for my sweetie when I noticed that the parking lot was largely unavailable. There were traffic cones at all my usual entrances and I was moved out of my comfort zone and forced to use some foreign entrance surrounded by strange unfamiliar asphalt. I was of course curious, but I was on a mission.

My peripheral inputs discerned that the parking lot was in fact getting a new set of traffic lines; a refurb really, as no new patterns were appearing. What made this interesting was the crew. I processed their sound first – collecting the cadence of their phrases and the open intimacy of banter. But the Epsom Salts were calling. As I emerged triumphant from the big box I got some clearer visual images.

The mother with her toddler in a shopping cart, admonishing the child not to get burned by the sparkler it was twirling. That’s a good lesson. The father valiantly wrestling the paint spraying machine into submission, as he lay down the crisp new yellow lines that differentiate my space from yours. In shorts and bare chested he was a billboard of bold prison tats; his movements quick and assertive. The Matriach barking redundant orders from around a dangling cigarette; her tiny legs supporting the authority of her bulbous torso.

It struck me that they were a form of Gypsy Band, or maybe even a rock band, sweeping into town to own the stage for some fleeting moment. And own it they do, with their traffic cones and bright machines. They commandeer the resources of the venue for their personal use and strut with the plumage of authority over the space they have acquired. It is temporary authority but it is total control through its duration. They will dominate this parking lot tonight and move their caravan to a new parking lot tomorrow night, for that is when they work. And the whole extended family is there, from toddlers to grandparents, providing a useful service and owning the world they live in. Free on the wind and hard on the earth.

I could not linger, I had collected the requisite impressions, and my sweetie needed a soak.

In 2010 my friend Chris Carter asked me to video and edit Paperhand Puppet Intervention‘s production of Love and Robots. The performances took place in Saxapahaw, NC in October of 2010 and were a joy to document. This was the second of two filmings, the first taking place at the Art Center in Carrboro, NC.

Originally, there was a hope that we might record the music and narration separately in an ADR fashion, like Hollywood, but that never came together. Jimmy Magoo actually rebuilt the entire series of songs, but had a devastating computer crash – boo hoo. Consequently, the sound is a roughly recorded version of what the audience heard live.

I will expand on this blurb in the following days, listing principal players and puppeteers, but I want you to see what these folks did in an old gymnasium perched on the banks of the Haw River.

Tim needs work. Instead of plowing I’ve been reading tractor manuals, and as a consequence I’m about out of potatoes. It has been fun and I’m sure my chops will improve now that I understand the tools better- you know I love that learning curve, but education doesn’t equal moolah.

So, I will be posting like crazy to catalog the various projects, art, music, and film that have filled my days over time. Hopefully this will have some entertainment value, as well as the practical application of helping me negotiate the realities of work. I have started posting images from “100 Images”, a project I started to better utilize Photoshop as a creative medium, and I will soon post excerpts from “Home Power Hour”, a video program chronicling a weekly radio show broadcast on WCOM LPFM in Carrboro, N.C.

While trying to set up an account at Mojang to buy a Minecraft account I run into the verify email glitch, which doesn’t seem to send an email to my account, and so I can’t get a user name to use the account i can’t buy because Mojang/Minecraft can’t send me a verification email.

I’ve tested and retested the account. It works fine. I’ve set up alternate accounts. I’ve changed servers, but nothing has worked. I wonder at the lost revenue, and figure that Mojang has not sold out to a larger company because they know that they would all be fired for incompetence. I am over making efforts to plow through their miasma of a system.

that I have a blog. And I fantasize about what I would put on my blog. All the art and stories. All the music and film. And then I remember that I don’t have any of those things together to share. Of course since my audience is largely future versions of me I fully understand the obstacles that impede my growth as a blog star, and so I am forgiven.

But having such an understanding audience is a moral hazard, as I tend to stretch even their patience with my incessant procrastination. Lately I’ve started gathering the snippets and shards of my creative life, and forcing them into a shareable form. It’s actually a reconstruction effort owing to some unfortunateness a few years ago, but I’ve milked that event for all the slack I can afford myself. I feel much better now.

There are too many stipulations to satisfy before I can start sharing the trivia that is my human life. Right now I am writing this more from a sense of guilt and obligation than a sense of sharing. I’ve read about many writers who sit down and write for some appointed hours every day. Of course they don’t always have something to say, but sometimes the stream of words start falling out like siphoned water and it’s nearly impossible to catch them all before they spill on the floor.

I can do that, but it’s self-indulgent to a masturbatory level, a metaphor I will not expand on. There is plenty to share, but I hold my life and thoughts close, and I feel vulnerable beyond courage. I am swaddled in doubt, but driven by vision, or delusion, depending on how it is articulated. Wasted words.